The Vertical Podcast with Chris Mannix: Kosta Koufos (Yahoo Sports)

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This is

This is exactly the stuff I hate. Instead of worrying about basketball we are left trying to figure out what players like Cousins and which are the rats. Guess what if there is a player in the lockerroom that feels its necessary to give some anonymous intel to the media, there is probably something there. NBA players are like a unionized brotherhood. You would really have to rub someone the wrong way for a fellow player to call you out gor your antics. I would love to have a team where the only thing we have to worry about is basketball.Also Bellinelli and Koufos are true professionals that come from class organizations. I will refuse to ever buy into the script that these guys are lockerroom cancers that are out to kill Demarcus for Karl, that is just laughable.


Oh you mean drama free unified winning fronts like, let's say the Cavaliers, cruising toward their second straight Finals appearance?

Besides we aren't figuring out anything of the sort. We're figuring out Sacto has a couple of divisive media rats, but given our record and the coaching issue/drama that lockerroom actually held together really well without splintering into agendas.
 
I'm 8 minutes into this interview and there's little I can take from it other than that Chris Mannix is obnoxious. That fake salesman laugh.
 
Oh you mean drama free unified winning fronts like, let's say the Cavaliers, cruising toward their second straight Finals appearance?

Besides we aren't figuring out anything of the sort. We're figuring out Sacto has a couple of divisive media rats, but given our record and the coaching issue/drama that lockerroom actually held together really well without splintering into agendas.

indeed. i generally dispute the notion that the kings' locker room was a drama-filled vortex of dysfunction this season. hack media members like ailene voison and grant napear have made a cozy home within their perpetually alarmist perspectives, and as a result, there's a fair amount of melodramatic hand-wringing that occurs online, in the papers, and across the radio dial--and fans just love to eat up that kind of sh*t. but there was never much evidence provided to support all of that hand-wringing...

in the aftermath of this season, consummate pro's like caron butler and kosta koufos have each said that it was a tough year in which things just didn't gel the way everybody had hoped, but neither pointed to specific problems. neither called out demarcus cousins. neither claimed that there was irreconcilable splintering throughout the locker room. honestly, i have a hard time believing that there was any overarching locker room issue at all. certainly there were isolated incidents of boiled-over frustration and tension, but even after demarcus' now-infamous tirade against george karl, the locker room appeared to hold together just fine. we heard no reports of factions forming. nobody used the media to snipe at others on the team or within the organization. hell, even karl, ever the divider, mostly kept his media sessions diplomatic. ultimately, it just didn't work, and now the kings are moving on. not much else to see hear, if you ask me...

of course, none of this is to say that the kings' locker room was the healthiest of environments this last season; friction between a head coach and his roster, as well as the simple frustrations that result from losing, are going to negatively impact any locker room. it was probably a bummer of a place to be, but it hardly seems to me as if there was some kind of massive, melodramatic crack running through the locker room...
 
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